Would you buy a chicken coop for $500 dollars? That’s exactly what five people did to help raise funds for a birthing center in Uganda, Africa this past Friday night. The Blooming in Uganda Gala, held at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, raised over $22,000 through ticket sales, donations and a silent auction. Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s Speaking of Faith and Matthew Sanford, paraplegic yogi instructor and author and founder of Mind Body Solutions, were special guests of the evening with Sarah Longacre.

Complications related to childbirth kill over 150 women a week in Uganda which amounts to a staggering 8,000 women a year. Longacre is committed to saving lives by helping to make a new birthing center a reality. She is working with Shanti Uganda and other partners that will provide a safe place for women to have their babies with sanitary medical supplies. In addition, it will provide nutritious meals grown onsite, and present a place for midwives to meet for ongoing educational workshops. Longacre is the founder and owner of Blooma Yoga Studio in Edina, Minnesota. The yoga studio specializes in all aspects of prenatal and postnatal classes for mothers and babies as well as a host of other yoga classes. I asked Longacre how she became involved in this incredible project and she said she was inspired by Seane Corn who started Off the Mat, Into the World. It is a yoga community that encourages conscious activism and service to make a difference in the world.

Longacre hopes to spend three weeks in Uganda in February 2010. “We live in a city of abundance and it is the second best place to give birth,” she says. With her passionate leadership she is helping to share some of that abundance with Uganda and raise awareness about safe birthing for Ugandan mothers.

Shanti Uganda

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Organizations, Reader Involvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.